TELEVISING THE REVOLUTION

One of the stranger side effects of Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ has been the explosion in breast implants. They cost around one thousand dollars a pair, and business is booming. With the bulk of the government’s funding dedicated to first aid centres, run in the vast majority of cases by Cuban doctors in the country’s poorest slums, investment in hospital care has plummeted, resulting in a surge in demand for private healthcare. These clinics plough their windfall profits back into their plastic surgery business, keen to pander to the crudely seductive narcissism of the only country in the world that has produced a Miss World and a Miss Universe simultaneously. Twice.